Guardian Reports More "Good News", Kids are Dying in Venezuela

Unfair trade agreements allow the import of cheap US agricultural products. Cheap agricultural products, such as corn, is highly subsidized by US taxpayers. It is corporate welfare to agribusiness. Indigenous small farmers cannot compete with the dumped US agricultural imports. They are driven out of business and off their farms. With nowhere else to go, the poor and dispossessed migrate to the city where they are exploited as wage-slaves. Because the poor are vulnerable, they are easy targets for extortion from criminal gangs---while corrupt police look the other way.

Ironically, the poor fleeing for their lives, seeking protection and an opportunity to earn a subsistence wage head in the direction of their abuser---to the USA. That is why the US is experiencing a sharp increase in people from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador seeking political asylum.

Trump and his xenophobic racist supporters want the US to turn asylum seekers away. They want the US to be a "gated community", as Trump put it. When other countries such as Venezuela want to be a "gated community" and keep out US corporations and unfair trade from exploiting them, then the US sends in the jackals.

In the old days the US "opened" foreign "gated communities" with gunboats, and admitted that the purpose was commercial interests. At one time or another, over the past 200 years the US has invaded almost every Latin American and Caribbean country; some of them multiple times. US invasions haven't been for democracy. They have been for commercial reasons, and the source of wealth for those that became elite US families.

Today foreign holdouts from the neoliberal Washington Consensus are "opened" by the CIA, Special Forces, mercenaries, terrorists, local collaborators, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, and other government-private NGO's. NGO's do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly to sow discontent, opposition and violence.

The US uses psychological warfare and propaganda to "open" closed foreign countries. The US uses threats, bribes, political isolation, economic sanctions and the constant reminder that "all options are on the table". The mainstream media, such as the Guardian, are complicit by keeping up a steady drumbeat of propaganda.

The US always presents its aggression as being out of concern for democracy and human rights, or because the US is being threatened by some tiny country, like Cuba, Bolivia, or Venezuela. For example, Pompeo just gave a delusional lying speech in Cairo that the US is a force for good, and he praised the US-backed bloody military-coup dictator Sisi. Mentioning commercial interests, greedy banks and the military-industrial-complex is considered uncouth, even though it is the truth behind US foreign policy.

The mainstream media is a vital player and collaborator in preparing the domestic audience for US wars of aggression, interventions, and regime changes. Mockingbirds, such as Tom Phillips, and a compliant media, are very useful idiots in advancing the US agenda. The mainstream media such as the Guardian creates a circus-like atmosphere of a crisis. They sell the public that "something has to be done".

After a US invasion the mainstream media provides the cover story. When all the lies come out as they did about the Iraq War, then the media sticks its head in the sand and denies any responsibility. When the media acts as a propagandist for war, then they have blood on their hands too.

US imperialism, neocolonialism, resource exploitation, imposed austerity, unfair trade, and the US monopolizing of the international financial system has destroyed millions of people's lives. Trump says he does not hate US victims. Like a lot of US Americans, he just does not care. The US has no empathy for its victims, but cries crocodile tears for the alleged victims of US enemies. It is the syndrome that Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky referred to as "Worthy and Unworthy Victims".

As Paul Jay of The Real News Network put it, for Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer, and Tony Soprano, the US is like the mafia: "it's not personal, it's just business".

The Guardian used to challenge the Washington Consensus. It used to inform, instead of misinform. As the Guardian was publishing the Snowden Files the GCHQ cracked down. They smashed the Guardian's computers, as well as freedom of the press. The Guardian said it obliged as a symbolic act. The "symbolic act" was the Guardian caving in to the GCHQ. Afterwards there was an exodus of many courageous editors and real journalists from the Guardian.

Tom Phillips is the Guardian's Latin America mockingbird for Washington's neocons who are trying to destroy Venezuela, and stamp out socialism in Latin America. It is not a question of pro-Maduro or against-Maduro. It is about the integrity and professionalism of journalism.

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